Pros: Great producing, rocking as well as polished and beautiful.
Cons: No lyric sheet, perhaps to short
The Bottom Line: Get this if you want an album that both rocks and has a soaring spiritual feel to it. An underated band that more people should know about.
boffo's Full Review: Mother Juno [Remaster] by The Gun Club
The Gun Club was an american band often asociated with psychobilly, a style of music that arose in the early eighties. Psychobilly was a cross-breed between punk music and rockabilly often coupled with cartoonish or overtly sexual lyrics.
While The Gun Club's debut album, Fire Of LOve had some leanings towards that genre their later efforts such as Mother Juno from 1987 have very little to do with psychobilly. The music on mother can better be described as a mixture of blues, rock and rockabilly. Band leader Jeffrey Lee Pierce's lyrics are often dark but the music is still uplifting and the lyrics lack the gleeful immaturity of psychobilly.
The album kicks of with three pretty straight rock songs Bill Bailey, Thunderhead and Lupita screams. All of these are carried by steady guitar riffs and drumming with pierce's rather high pitched vocals soar over the music. My favorite of these is Lupita screams because i like the distinct main guitar riff and it hallso has a nice bluesy guitar solo.
After these three comes what van be called the albums centepiece the six and half minute long Yellow eyes. The song is much slower in tempo than the preceding songs. As the other songs it's based on a few simple riffs on this song they're played with a slide guitar with a very sultry sound. On this songs the bands female bassist Romi Mori makes her first main apperance with some very distinct bass playing.
Towards the end of the song a guest player also makes an apperance, Blixa Bargeld Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Einstürzende Neubauten fame, contributing what he does best: weird and slightly creepy guitar noise.
This is followed by the song Araby wich is similar in tempo to the first three songs but lacks those songs distinct guitar riffing, instead focusing more on the bass and drums.
Then comes a song simply entitled Hearts. It's a rather desperate sounding love song. The song starts of with some slide guitar noise over wich Pierce sings the first verse before the songs takes of with more beatiful minor riffing and a truly howling pierce vocal. One of the albums best songs.
Next is the brief My cousin Kim. This is the most rocking song of all on the album. Pierce sing the tale of a military pilot combining lines such as "everbody loved my cousin Kim" and "He was one hell of a man" with "Kim set fire on people, fire on their face and hands". This song has great playing by all band members and is perhaps my favorite of all on the album.
The album ends with Port Of Souls. Wich is a brighter more life affirming song following the darker My Cousin Kim.
The album was produced by Robin Guthrie from the british dream-pop band Cocteau Twins. The production is great as all the album has a beautiful soaring uplifting sound to it. The sound is very polished and dosen't really sound dirty the way one would expect a blues/rock/rockabilly to sound But nothing is lost because of it. It manages to sound beautifully produced while still retaining all it's passion and feel.
The Gun Club had a troubled career as band leader and sogwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce fought several bouts with severe alcohol and drug addiction. Therefore the band disbanded and reformed several times before comming to a final end in 96 when Pierce died, a victim of the AIDS virus. The song Under The Gun from Blondies album No exit is dedicated to pierce who at one time was president of Blondie's fan club.
If you're looking for music that is both rocking and highly passionate with intelligent lyrics i would highly recommend Mother Juno. It is along with their debut Fire Of love their best record.
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Getting ready to go out
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